Enhancing Soil Health, Crop Productivity and Financial Viability Through INM Approaches in Cowpea

The study entitled “Enhancing soil health, crop productivity and financial viability through INM approaches in cowpea” was conducted at RRTTS, Mahisapat, Dhenkanal, during kharif season of 2020 and 2021, with eight different INM practices which included (T1)Absolute control, (T2) Farmers practice, (T3) Soil test dose(STD), (T4) STD100+R+PSM, (T5) STD75+R+PSM+FYM, (T6) STD100+R+PSM+FYM, (T7) STD75+R+PSM+VC, (T8) STD100+R+PSM+VC. The integrated application of biofertilizers Rhizobium (R) at 20 g/kg of seed and PSM at 4 kg/ha, FYM at 5 t/ha or vermicompost (VC) at 2.5 t/ha, and lime at 0.2 LR as per the treatment imposed in the experiment. Among all treatments T7 exhibited best results in characters like plant height (54.3 cm), root length (30.8 cm), no. of nodules per plant (41), pod length (33.2 cm) and no. of pods per plant (17). Highest yield was observed with integration of STD75 along with BFs and VC; 5.32 and 8.45 t ha-1 following different package of practices. The highest uptake of macro nutrients in pod (128.6, 23.2 and 14.4 kg ha-1, respectively) and in stover (33.2, 22.2, 24.8 kg ha-1, respectively) was observed in T8. The highest microbial population of 49.40 (x 106cfu g-1 of soil), 22.63 (x 105cfu g-1 of soil) and 30.93 (x 104cfu g-1 of soil) were recorded in T8 followed by T7. Such a practice package was judged to be advantageous because it generated the highest net return of Rs 1, 51,400, resulting in the highest B:C ratio of 3.80.